This Spiritual Energy is Lethal!
Chapter 340: Time Theory

Chapter 340: Chapter 340: Time Theory

"The corridor in the sky isn’t the only one, but we’d have to go around from other floors, and it’s a long way," Wang Ailin said, pushing her glasses subconsciously as if she had thought of something unpleasant.

At that moment, the entire office suddenly shook as if the floor were shifting; Chen Ke braced himself against the wall with his left hand, trying to keep his balance. Wang Ailin also held onto the cabinet fixed to the wall.

The shaking came with a great scraping noise, and Chen Ke could also hear a sigh-like sound emerging from beneath the spherical building.

The shaking continued for over two minutes before stopping; when everything returned to calm, Chen Ke looked at Wang Ailin and asked, "Does this sphere... just spin around for fun sometimes?"

"No... this is the spherical containment site’s self-sealing mechanism... in the event of a containment breach, if no manual intervention is detected, the final self-sealing program will be initiated..." Wang Ailin explained.

"So you’re saying... we’re locked inside...?" Chen Ke asked.

Wang Ailin nodded. She walked to the office door, peering into the corridor outside. Chen Ke didn’t need to go to the door to see the changes in the environment outside through the small window in the door.

The corridor that had been lit by bright white lights was now plunged into the red glow of emergency lights.

Chen Ke could never understand why, in emergencies, all buildings chose to use dark red light as a signal. Couldn’t they pick a more pleasant color to ease the mood?

Then, he heard the sound of snapping cables. Wang Ailin sat by the door, covering her ears, her expression somewhat downcast.

"Wang Ailin... what’s that sound?" Chen Ke asked.

"The aerial corridors are self-destructing... This is the final directive of the self-sealing program to prevent sentient containment items in the spherical containment site from leaving..." Wang Ailin said, her voice tinged with fear, but as a research staff member in the institute, she was somewhat mentally prepared for such situations.

"There must be another way... Even if it’s self-sealing, there should be a reserved escape route for personnel, right? Wasn’t that considered when this building was constructed?" Chen Ke was unwilling to resign himself to fate; there must be a way out.

"No... this place wasn’t built by us... Chen Ke, this spherical containment site is itself an item of containment..." Wang Ailin slowly said.

"..." Chen Ke opened his mouth, not knowing what to say.

This sphere turned out to be an ancient structure discovered deep in the Nevada Desert, with an indestructible exterior and an interior that could transform freely.

After some internal modification by the Administration Bureau, it was used as a presidential bunker during the Spiritual Energy War...

Later, the research institute of the United Federation appropriated it as a containment site for various mutated entities, and it’s been in use ever since.

Surrounding the sphere, the uppermost layer is a large scientific research center where research staff can perform experiments. Below that, there are 127 floors, each with a varying number of rooms for individual containment.

The 127 floors of containment protocols actually only occupy a small fraction of the sphere’s space; below that, there is 60% of the space available for expansion and redesign, and the floors closer to the sphere’s center are a bit larger in area.

However, both the Administration Bureau and the research institute have clear regulations that the bottom 20% of the space is strictly for containment and modification, the specific reasons for which Wang Ailin did not reveal.

Pacing inside the room, Chen Ke figured they should now be in the research center.

The researchers wandering outside without consciousness were muttering incoherently, the sound coupled with the dark red light of the corridor was terrifying, and the door to research laboratory 0451 had been melted by Chen Ke, so Wang Ailin’s emotional state was not stable.

As a scientific researcher, Wang Ailin would take a more rational approach to Spiritual Energy phenomena; if fear comes from the unknown, Wang Ailin knew far less unknowable things than others...

But even so, people cannot escape their innate aversion to strange environments. Wang Ailin hugged her knees, her eyes fixed on the coffee cup that had fallen to the ground opposite her, trying to focus her attention.

Meeting a girl like this, under the current circumstances, was somewhat of a relief for Chen Ke; he wasn’t afraid of combat, but he feared having to care for a helpless giant baby by his side.

The place was temporarily safe, and there was nowhere to go, so Chen Ke propped up the fallen table, dragging it to the door to barricade it. Although it was futile, it at least provided a semblance of security.

"Now that things have come to this... Let’s talk about serious matters," Chen Ke said, sitting across from Wang Ailin and putting his gun back in its holster.

"But before that, I have many things I want to ask you, Chen Ke," Wang Ailin looked up, "will you tell me the truth?"

"It depends on what your questions are," Chen Ke said, "I may refuse to answer some, and I might gloss over details in others."

Wang Ailin adjusted her glasses, swiftly got up from the floor, ran to the desk, took out a small notebook and a water-based pen from the drawer, and then sat back down opposite Chen Ke.

"You’re now... planning to..." Chen Ke was somewhat puzzled.

"Chen Ke, Diana told me some things. When you took the subway, you traveled to the world of 2006, right?" Wang Ailin asked eagerly.

"That depends on how you see it," Chen Ke replied, "it’s 2009, you know, but the time period we went to was already no different from the apocalypse."

Moreover, he had traveled from 2018, but all the history and nations here did not match anything Chen Ke was familiar with.

"I know, but that’s precisely the allure of time, Chen Ke. You’ve met living people over there, haven’t you?" asked Wang Ailin impatiently.

Chen Ke pondered for a moment, unsure whether he should tell her the truth, after all, Wang Ailin was from the research institute, and it wouldn’t be good for her to know too much.

"No, there were no people in that world, just red dust... which is... what I might become... But speaking of which... what is that pile of ash over there?" As he spoke, Chen Ke pointed to something on a table inside the research lab.

A meter-long table was covered in a significant amount of dust, some of which had fallen to the floor due to the recent tremor. Probes from instruments on all four corners were inserted into the ashes, as if testing some readings.

"That’s the body of an investigator... not very important. Let’s continue the conversation about 2006. Diana told me that you were in Carefree City when you went back in time. Was that Carefree City much different from ours here?" Wang Ailin spoke while taking notes with her pen.

"I don’t know. I’ve never been to Carefree City. I don’t know if the two Carefree Cities are different, but I’m sure that the world over there is already post-apocalyptic. If it truly is our past, then what does that make now?" Chen Ke shook his head.

"That’s where the problem lies, Chen Ke. Perhaps time is not as we know it. Maybe time does not have causality and sequence..." Wang Ailin said.

"I think that doesn’t make sense. Our words and actions are all bound by cause and effect, and order. Motivation leads to action, action leads to results, results spark new motivations..." Chen Ke argued.

"But how do you explain this... I... I’ve seen you before, within my illusions," Wang Ailin said.

"What do you mean?" Chen Ke asked, confused.

"I... have seen you twice, both times under some sort of hallucinatory state, and the events of those two experiences seemed to have happened today..." Wang Ailin said.

"Maybe you just had a dream... Dreams are a disorderly combination of existing memories... Maybe..." Chen Ke was speaking when he himself started to feel his own explanation was unbelievable.

Indeed, Wang Ailin had known his name before he had even introduced himself, and since the beginning of their conversation, she never asked who he was...

As if she had seen him before.